One of the joys of kids is watching them play 'pretend'. Watching them act out everyday situations into their play time is amazing to watch. If you don't think they are watching your every move, guess again. A parenting tip I learned years ago was that 'more is caught, than taught'.
Our girls love to play pretend with Abbie as the leader. Lately, it's been Abbie as school teacher with Julia as her captive pupil. Julia sits quietly listening to Abbie expound everything she heard her teacher say that day and then is handed a stack of papers to work on. Another recent pretend play time was called barrel racing and involved a stick horse, a long plastic bat, play belts for harnesses, and spatulas for "wappers", as Julia called them. Imitating their time with riding Aunt Missy's horses, they put 3 frisbees in the living room and took turns "wapping" their stick horse around the frisbees to see who could go the fastest. It was all fun until a horse gets tripped up suddenly by a chair leg or other unforeseen obstacle.
An all time favorite, though, is pretend church. I can remember playing church growing up and I even remember a picture of my little brother drawing a Sunday school lesson on a chalk board, in his room. The lesson proclaimed "God=Good" at the top and the "Devil=Bad" at the bottom. Our kids are no different. Usually with the girls standing on the fireplace step singing and Jacob standing on the floor preaching. The girls love to stand on that ledge and belt out anything that resembles a church song. They pull out song books from the piano bench to make it look official, even if Julia is holding hers upside down.
Julia has been carrying this pretend singing over into the actual church services and will often times be heard belting out "her own version" to keep up with the others. Today was no different except that she started putting up her hand as a microphone to copy the worship leaders on stage. It was too much and I just had to get out my phone to take a picture. Obviously that action was "caught" because it was never "taught" to her to do that.
What will they pretend next?
Julia hammering out her version of 'Blessed Be the Name'
1 comment:
mom has a picture of that chalkboard lesson somewhere. maybe she can dig it up and scan it in for you. things seemed so much simpler then but i guess everything still boils down to that, God = good and Devil = bad.
you need to get the kids hooked on bullfrogs and butterflies!
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